Saturday, 9 June 2012

OLYMPICS fans last night blasted London 2012 chiefs after tickets went on sale — for £1,800 each....Sarah Willingham, of letssavesomemoney.com, said: “The Olympics is an event for the people of Great Britain — it should not be an event for the rich.”

Thing is, if you crunch the numbers on the cost of the Olympics, £1800 is actually probably about the break-even cost.

The games are costing something around £10-12bn to host. We get a few billion back for TV rights afterwards, and the land will have some value (something around another billion). The venues have some value, but it's mostly a rounding error here.

So, we're looking at a net cost of between £7bn and £9bn. 4m tickets have been sold. Divide one by the other and were the Olympics to pay for itself it would cost around £1700-1900 per ticket. I'd much rather that people who actually cared about dressage or synchronised swimming stuck their hands in their pockets to pay to see them than forced those people that would rather watch Pixar movies or Stevenage Town to do so.

At that price, it certainly should be an event for the rich. You can buy decent seats at Silverstone and get a helicopter ride in for less.